The next time you hear the woman shouting at her husband to ‘Start the car!’ she might be leaving IKEA with some home insurance.
Swedish furniture giant IKEA Group is entering the insurance market, rolling out trial sales of a range of policies at select stores within the next couple of weeks, according to a source of Bloomberg News.
IKEA started selling child and pregnancy insurance, branded Omifall, on Oct. 1 at a few select IKEA stores in Sweden, the company has confirmed. On the heels of that, Swedish stores will extend the offering to home-insurance products as well, the person said.
Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores has been selling in the P&C space with broker partners in Canada for some time, and recently announced that it will be getting into the health insurance business through similar relationships – specifically with DirectHealth.com in the U.S. market.
But for IKEA, the move into the insurance market is a sign that ownership may be shifting from the father to the sons.
“This is the first time daddy properly lets the sons’ company into IKEA,” the person familiar with IKEA’s insurance push said, noting the generational shift under way as the Kamprad sons increasingly assume a more active role in the IKEA sphere.
According to Bloomberg, Kamprad’s sons, Peter, Mathias and Jonas, have for the most part kept a low profile as the father has maintained a strong grip on the furniture empire. Last year, however, the company said that Kamprad would step down from the board of Inter IKEA Holding, and that his eldest son, Mathias, would step up as chairman.
The initial plan by IKEA – a soft launch – is to target the 2.5 million members of the company’s loyalty club in Sweden, states the Bloomberg source, potentially expanding the insurance product range abroad at a later stage. Globally, IKEA’s club counts 59 million members.
IKEA declined to comment on the rollout of further insurance products.
